The New York Times is reporting on a classified document that they have obtained:

A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.

The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.
...
The station chief's cable has been widely disseminated outside the C.I.A., and was initially described by a government official who read the document and who praised it as unusually candid. Other government officials who have read or been briefed on the document later described its contents. The officials refused to be identified by name or affiliation because of the delicacy of the issue. The station chief cannot be publicly identified because he continues to work undercover.

Asked about the cable, a White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said he could not discuss intelligence matters. A C.I.A. spokesman would say only that he could not comment on any classified document.

For a rather funny take on this whole situation, read the latest from ScrappleFace. I wonder how long the New York Times pondered the choice to print details on classified documents... two or maybe three seconds? Did they ponder at all? I doubt it. Media organizations love classified documents, because they can spin them however they damn well please. They're terrific.

Here you have "unnamed sources" that you can quote (which always sound cool), and because they're unnamed for their protection, you can spin, misquote, or take information out of context because they'll never complain They need to stay anonymous for their own protection, and so they'll never disagree with the media's take on the story. Not only that, but whenever I read one of these pieces, you always see the same sort of line from the "official sources", which is to say that they don't comment on classified documents. Mostly because it's illegal... they're classified! So once again the media can spin the document however they like, knowing that official sources can't come out and directly comment on it. If those same official sources were to hand something to the Times under the table, do you think the Times would print it? If you answer yes, I have some ocean front property I'd like to show you here in Wisconsin.